Indiana prison treatment to the dying.

Pam Adams' brother, Bill French died in prison in Indiana
on August 3, 2002. Bill died in the Indiana prison's "hospice",
and Pam was permitted to be with him most of the time.

That
sounds like a really humanitarian gesture, doesn't it? But the
abuse, neglect and other horrors Pam and Bill endured was so
egregious that Pam has been knocked down - but not out.

Although
she's been scarred forever by what they were subjected to, Pam has
taken pen in hand to make sure that the state of Indiana never
forgets what they did to her family, and to try to prevent them from
ever treating other people in that same manner.

Here is
part one of her nightmare, in her own words:

Mr.
Sevier, I just wanted to tell you a few things. I don't know if
you remember me or not. I'm William French's sister.

Remember,
I was called on July 18th by your nursing director Kay Aynes, and she
said he may not make it until I get there, 5 hours away? I made it.
He came out of his coma for a few days.

Remember, I set
up a meeting with you to discuss my treatment as a sister of a dying
man? At the meeting you kept looking at the clock in order to
make me feel like I was taking up a whole lot of your time.
Remember?

Remember, I'm the one that told you that the
so-called hospice program, was not comfortable, like a hospice is
suppose to be? I realize they are prisoners, but hospice is
meant to make one comfortable while dying.

Remember, I
left his side for a few hours to go take a shower and a quick nap.
While I was gone someone wasn't doing their job, and let him fall
while trying to go to the bathroom.

He hadn't walked in
days. Have you ever tried to walk after being in a coma, and
not walking for however many days he laid there before I was called?

I came back to the prison and all they could tell
me was that an ambulance had taken him.

I know
hospice usually takes them straight to the morgue, but no one would
tell me if he was dead or alive, or where he'd been taken.

Have
you ever spent two days sitting in a hotel room wondering if your
brother or other loved one is dead or alive?

Remember,
I told you that it's not a good idea to put Captain Reigle and his
live-in girlfriend, Dotty working on the same desk at night together?

I did mean on the same desk, literally.

Bill
had told me in letters about them making out in front of the
infirmary window.

I guess to a lot of your employees,
dying prisoners are just a joke.

Remember, like you
said, once they enter those doors most family members just forget all
about them? Remember I told you I had never forgotten my
brother and never would?

Remember, I told you I had
finally had enough, and started to take notes, because there was so
much that went on that no one was supposed to see?

Remember
when I told you there are two sanitation worker inmates who are
volunteering for hospice? Brian and Jason wasted no time
getting their gloves on, cleaning Bill, changing his cathater bag,
changing Bill's bed, bathing and shaving him.

Jason did
the job of ten of your nurses. Actually, most of what he did
was the nurses' jobs.

Brian did the same, but mostly on
the other side of the infirmary.

Why are those great
volunteers no longer there? And Dr. Disonia?

Remember
when I told you the nurses did not go into the infirmary and check
until 4:30 am. I had heard a buzzer ringing from 2am until almost
4am.

That was Nikki Chesterman, Donna Jenkins, and
Dottie.

The night shift nurses would go to lunch and
leave the nurses station empty, or with a new, fill-in guard to sit
there. Most of the time it was empty.

Rememember
when I vented to a guard? He told the nurses, and Nikki the 3d
shift nurse, smarted off to me several times in my dying brother's
room.

She also said what they didn't see at the nurses
station, the video did see.

Remember I told you I caught
a guard snoring and sleeping at the video cameras? You asked me who
it was. I didn't want to say, for fear of retaliation against my
dying brother.

It was Louie, 3rd shift.

Remember
after I vented to the guard, and he told the Captain? The very
next morning they came in and took the chair right out from
underneath my handicapped aunt's behind, and told her no more staying
all night?

I had just left when they did that.
(You probably don't remember that, because you didn't even know my
aunt was with me.)

But it didn't matter to me that they
took the chair. I would have stood up for 14 days to be by his
side.

Remember when I was sitting at my brother's side,
and Captain Regal or Reigle came in at 9pm and told me I had to
leave?

I explained to him that I never make a promise,
so that I never have to break one, but the night I rushed to get by
my brother's side, I promised him I wouldnt leave him.

It
didn't matter to the Captain. I had to beg him for 15 more
minutes so I could beg my brother to die while I was there. So
I could keep my promise to him.

Have you ever had to
beg your mother, father, brother, sister, or any other loved one to
die?

Remember when I told you when he made me leave
that night that it took something out of me; that I didn't even want
to visit my dying brother there anymore? I had to force myself to go
for the next two days.

Not to mention, I had no
transportation there with me and I was miles from the hotel where my
handicapped and deaf aunt was. Someone in the front office called for
her to pick me up.

Nobody cared.

Major
Crabb, who had told them to make me leave, walked through the lobby
while I was in a shambles. He wouldn't even look at me.

Remember
on Thursday, I was there from about 4:30 to 6:30 and left on my own
without being asked, but your guards at the front told other family
members who had driven all night to get there, that his visiting
hours were changed back to regular hours again on Wednesday?

Aren't
regular visiting hours from 12-4 on Thursdays? Or 12-3?

Remember
you telling me you guys would contact me if he got any worse?
Even after Kay Aynes said he couldn't get any worse; that the next
step for him was death.

Remember, I told you my next
contact from the prison would be that he was dead?

Remember,
I went on to wait for the other family members, because they were
driving around until noon, to wait to get in to see him after being
awake all night.

Remember, me and the other family
members went in to visit him and prayed over him, praying for him to
die while we were there?

Remember how hateful the
employees were to me after the Captain had his say?

Remember
how I told you I had sat there sometimes all day and night, without
wanting to bother for an escort to go to the bathroom? Actually
that wasn't too bad, considering I wasn't offered a glass of water
the whole time I was there.

But I was there for my
brother, not for me.

Remember me telling you and Kay
that if it's hospice, they need to at least paint some clouds on the
wall, if its going to be used to die in?

There was a
laugh and Kay said it would be to hard to clean? Have you seen
those walls?

Remember I told you that isolation chamber
they were calling a hospice unit, was the same room Bill was in 4
point restraints in a few weeks earlier, because his cancer was going
to his brain?

Then he died there.

Hospice?
I think not.

Remember, right after our meeting I went
to visit him until 4pm with other family members?

Remember,
at 2:15 am a girl from the prison called the hotel and wanted to
inform me that my FATHER had died at 1:10?